Inventions
The Airplane
Also Known As Aeroplane (British and Commonwealth spelling)
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The airplane is a powered, heavier than air aircraft that generates lift from fixed wings moving through the air. Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with the first controlled, sustained flight of such an aircraft, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, a flight the brothers themselves documented with photographs, witnesses and a flight log.
Facts
Disputed
YearOrville and Wilbur Wright are credited with the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier than air aircraft, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. Several earlier and contemporaneous claims exist and remain debated among historians of aviation, including Gustave Whitehead reported 1901 flight in Connecticut, Richard Pearse reported 1902 flight in New Zealand, and Clement Ader 1890 powered hop in France, none as well documented or as clearly controlled and sustained as the Wright brothers flight. Patent or First-Use DateFirst controlled, sustained flight of the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903. SignificancePowered flight collapsed intercontinental travel time from weeks to hours, created the aviation and later commercial airline industries, and became the foundation on which powered spaceflight was later built. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Aluminum a third the density of steel with a corrosion-resistant oxide layer made it the standard structural metal of aviation from the first all-metal aircraft of the 1910s onward.
Duralumin's first aircraft use was Hugo Junkers' Junkers J 3 airframe in 1916, and it became a standard early metal-aircraft structural material.
In Field
Invented By
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954
Airplane (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationEtymology and usage sectionQuote, Etymology and usage section
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, and most of the Commonwealth, the term 'aeroplane' is usually applied to these aircraft.
Duralumin (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: DuraluminView the Source Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Invented By: Wilbur Wright
Brazilian historians and much of the Brazilian public credit Alberto Santos-Dumont 14-bis flight of November 12, 1906, in Paris, as the true first powered flight, not the Wright brothers December 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk. The argument rests on how each flight was made: Santos-Dumont 14-bis took off unaided under its own power from level ground in full public view and landed under control, while the Wright Flyer left the ground from a launching rail using a catapult-assisted takeoff into a headwind and was witnessed by a small group on a remote beach, with the Wright brothers themselves not releasing clear photographic and eyewitness documentation for some time afterward. This dissent does not contest that the Wright brothers flew first by date; it contests whether the December 1903 flight meets the same unaided, self-contained standard of powered flight that Santos-Dumont indisputably met three years later, and it remains the standard account taught in Brazil and reflected in French aviation historiography.
A dissenting reading, from Brazilian aeronautical historiography and the Santos-Dumont priority claimEncyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
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